2011 Mercedes-Benz E Class Wagon

America's fickle regard for station wagons hasn't meant much to most luxury automakers, who've continued to offer a steady stream of wagons and wagonlike cars. The latest example is the Mercedes-Benz E350 4Matic wagon, based on an E-Class that was redesigned a little over a year ago. Its arrival was all but certain: Of the nameplate's eight prior generations, four have included a wagon. I predict Wagon Five won't go down as a particularly memorable edition.

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The E350 wagon brings some useful innovations, but its undersized cargo area and puzzling driving dynamics diminish the appeal.

As its name suggests, the E-Class wagon comes with a V-6 engine and all-wheel drive, in Sport or Luxury editions. Rear-wheel drive, a V-8 and a diesel V-6 — all available in other E-Class cars — weren't offered in the wagon as of publication. I'll focus primarily on the E350 Sport wagon we evaluated.

Not Crossing Over

From Honda to BMW, the handbook on wagon styling evidently calls for anything but a wagon — which leads to sleek, quasi-crossover profiles that lead to minimal cargo room and even worse blind spots. Good news: Mercedes ignored that trend. Like its predecessor, the E350 wagon looks like a proper family-hauler, complete with a flat roofline, large rear windows and a massive tail. Bumper to bumper, the wagon is about an inch longer than the sedan — and 4.5 inches longer than Mercedes' M-Class SUV.

A year in, the E-Class' newly angular quad headlights have worn well, though the standard quad fog lights look out of place, and cheesy. Upgrade to the E-Class' optional xenon headlights, and a strip of LEDs replace the fog lights. Much better.

Modest Power

Throw in the upsized dimensions and standard all-wheel drive, and the E350 wagon is, well, portly. Its considerable 4,213-pound curb weight is greater than the V-8 E550 4Matic sedan's. The wagon's sole drivetrain — a 268-horsepower, 3.5-liter V-6 — is up to the task of moving this barge, but it never feels sprightly. Power is strong enough around town, but the engine needs to rev high to muster up interstate passing power. With two occupants and some 500 pounds of cargo, the E350 didn't feel outmatched at low speeds, but it required the drivetrain's full reserves to merge onto the highway.

The standard seven-speed automatic upshifts smoothly and kicks down to a lower gear soon enough to accelerate lightly out of a corner. If you need immediate power, though — passing slow traffic, for example — it can stumble clumsily through two- or three-gear downshifts. There's a Sport mode that holds lower gears longer, but it does little to clean up the shifts.

Overall gas mileage is a disappointing 19 mpg — a figure the supercharged Audi A6 3.0T Avant (wagon) and turbocharged BMW 535i Gran Turismo (wagon-like) beat by 2 or 3 mpg. What's more, both competitors are much quicker.

Ride & Handling

In its V-8 E550 guise, the E-Class offers unrivaled ride quality, the sort that even its $60,000 peers can't match. Absent the sedan's available Airmatic adaptive air suspension, the E350 wagon gets ordinary suspension tuning in Luxury models and firmer tuning in Sport ones. Our Sport tester had a set of optional 18-inch wheels and low-profile P245/40R18 tires, and the sum of it all exposed plenty of bumps. The suspension cushioned highway imperfections well enough, but around town it responded both noisily and harshly to potholes and other crevices. For a car of this league, I expect better.